


another language for the things we don't say

by assortedwords



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff, M/M, hanakotoba
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 07:23:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5734648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assortedwords/pseuds/assortedwords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mayuzumi and Akashi use flowers to communicate feelings. Sometimes they're teasing. Sometimes they're not.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>    <b>pink camellia - "longing for you"</b></p>
  <p>The next day Akashi texts him a picture of his hand holding a pink flower and a smiley face. If the message were a shitty Hallmark card it’d be <i>“wish you were here! Xoxo”</i>. Chihiro squints at the photo and scowls; he’s come to be very familiar with camellias.</p>
  <p>He Googles the meaning because he wants to know what his next move, his next flower should be to one-up Akashi, but as soon as he reads the meaning, he shuts his phone screen off and throws it across the room in one smooth motion.</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	another language for the things we don't say

**Author's Note:**

> in this AU, they're basically makeout buddies who haven't talked about what their relationship to e/o is.

  1. **white camellia – “you’re adorable”**



When Chihiro passes by a flower shop going back to his shared apartment with Akashi, he sees a flower so impossibly white he can’t quite believe its existence. It sticks out incredibly in between all the other colours of flowers in the tall display of bouquets surrounding the flower shop, but that’s not why he stops walking just in front of it.

He _swears_ he’s seen that in a LN illustration before.

The flower is white, tinged with yellow in the middle; to Chihiro’s inexperienced eyes, it reminds him of a rose. But if the novel he read was correct, the flower’s name is a _white camellia_ , perfectly fitting, and it had meant “you’re adorable”.

Chihiro buys the flower, and leaves it on Akashi’s bed.

Purely a sort of teasing gesture, of course. He snickers to himself as he shuts himself into his own room, and waits for Akashi to find it.

  1. **white lily – “virginity, purity”**



Nothing is said of the camellia, but the next day Chihiro finds _two_ white flowers resting innocuously on top of his laptop. One looks familiar—the one he’d given Akashi yesterday, he notices with a jolt, mood slowly souring as he _knows_ he’s being made fun of as well—and the other is not quite as white, a splash of green on the inside and…what are those called? Stamens? Hell if he knows.

There’s a note wrapped around the stem of the flowers: “ _White camellia, white lily.”_

Of _course_ Akashi would look down on him and assume he didn’t know anything about flowers. Chihiro irritably opens his laptop, the flowers sliding down onto the table with only soft thuds, hating that Akashi was right.

_“White lily: virginity, purity.”_

Chihiro scowls, and shuts his laptop with a bang. Akashi’s smile, the one he’d dubbed his “shit-eating grin”, floats into the surface of his mind. He’s _definitely_ being made fun of.

\- - -

  1. **palm leaves – “victory and success”**



Somewhere along the line, it turns into habit, a form of communication for things that fills the space between them, unspoken.

For a few days, Akashi seems down, his eyes flat and secretive. Chihiro’s always looked into his eyes for _some_ idea of what Akashi really thinks, so this is unnerving.

But he doesn’t know what to say; even if he did he doubts he’d manage to untangle the words from his throat, so instead, wordlessly, helplessly, he buys a palm leaf and drops them into Akashi’s lap. Akashi’s still in a pensive silence, but he grabs Chihiro’s arm when the latter tries to pass him by without facing him— _he just showed feelings goddamnit Akashi let him bury himself under a rock_ —and says, looking straight at him with those eyes, “Thank you.”

Chihiro’s tongue-tied, torn between pile upon pile of hasty denials and a whole lot of other things that’d just make him look like a classic tsundere, so he just manages a, “You’re welcome, brat,” and flees to his room.

\- - -

  1. **pink camellia – “longing for you”**



The next day Akashi texts him a picture of his hand holding a pink flower and a smiley face. If the message were a shitty Hallmark card it’d be “ _wish you were here! Xoxo”_. Chihiro squints at the photo and scowls. He’s come to be very familiar with camellias.

He Googles the meaning because he wants to know what his next move, his next flower should be to one-up Akashi, but as soon as he reads the meaning, he shuts his phone screen off and throws it across the room in one smooth motion.

He furiously tries to re-concentrate on his novel, but fails.

His heart’s beating a little faster. Just a little.

  1. **candy tuft – “indifference”**



Half an hour later, Chihiro stomps over to his phone, swipes it open and sends Akashi a shitty Google image of a candy tuft.

  1. **carnation (in general) – “fascination”  
white camellia, again**



Not two minutes later his phone pings with a picture of a white camellia— _not a-fucking-gain_ —and—is that a carnation. Chihiro’s no flower expert (though he’s slowly coming to be, what with this weird-ass fucking thing with Akashi he has going on), but even _he_ knows carnations are supposed to be heavily sappy and romantic shit.

> [RED-HAIRED SHIT]: The carnation is of the general variety, Mayuzumi-san.

…How are people _not_ convinced Akashi can read minds?

…

_Fascination_. Chihiro feels like some sort of guinea pig.

\- - -

  1. **mistletoe – “kiss me” (also “affection”)**



Christmas earns him mistletoe, of course. Akashi dangles it between them and looks at him expectantly, a grin curving on his lips. Chihiro doesn’t need Google to know what this means.

Chihiro sighs, but his irritation’s only on the surface. Akashi knows, of course he does, and slides an arm around Chihiro’s waist, presses closer.

“There’s another meaning to mistletoe,” Akashi murmurs against his mouth.

“What’d you say?”  
“Nothing, Mayuzumi-san.”

\- - -

  1. **dark pink rose – thankfulness**  
**narcissus – stay as sweet as you are  
lavender rose – enchantment  
yellow tulip – there’s sunshine in your smile**



On Valentine’s Day, Chihiro gets a whole fucking _bouquet_ of flowers delivered to him courtesy of the student council’s Valentine’s Day Delivery Service or some stupid shit like that. It’s the one time that all his classmates seem to notice his existence, and Chihiro can _feel_ Akashi smirking somewhere in his own expensive-ass university.

“What the fuck is this,” he says when he gets home, throws down the bouquet on the table like a gauntlet.

“It was Valentine’s Day,” Akashi replies, blinking up at him, innocent, unfazed.

“What do these even _mean_ ,” Chihiro prods on. There’s a note on the flowers, but only one. Narcissus, it’d said, and Chihiro _knows_ that one’s mocking. Akashi’s never given him any less than the name of all the flowers he gives him.

“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Akashi tells him, and that’s that.

\- - -

  1. **viscara – “will you dance with me?”**



One night, classical music drifts its way through the window, seeping into their apartment like the smell of fresh-baked cookies, just as warm and comfortable.

“I’ve heard this piece before,” Akashi says conversationally, looking up from his book. “It goes well with the waltz.”

“Well, _you_ would know,” Chihiro answers. “A proper young master.”

Akashi smiles in a way that says “The only reason your limbs are still intact is because I’m in a good mood today,” and stands up from where he’s been reading. There’s a light purple flower on the cover of his book. “Let’s dance, Mayuzumi-san.”

“What.”

Akashi walks up to him and holds out his hand, no-nonsense. “I’ll lead, since I don’t suppose you know how to dance. The waltz is easy enough, though.”

Mayuzumi looks at him in resignation, and takes his hand.

…

Akashi is warm pressed to him.

His heart’s beating faster than usual, but Akashi doesn’t mention it.

He might be wrong, because it feels like nobody ever quite knows the reasoning behind Akashi’s actions, but maybe it’s because Akashi’s is beating a little rapidly too.

\- - -

OMAKE:

  1. **variegated tulip – “beautiful eyes”**



Akashi wakes up to a streaked flower by his bedside—a tulip, and its streaks betray it as the variegated type.

He looks at it a little longer, and feels his face start to match his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> stuff about this fic:  
> 
> 
> * akashi only gives mayuzumi the names of flowers that he uses to tease him. meanwhile, mayuzumi cannot escape akashi's vast knowledge of everything but akashi is still weak to his flowers.  
> 
> * the candy tuft was mayu's tsundere coming out HA  
> 
> * akashi sees through the tsundere and finds it very adorable.  
> 
> * this isn't really hanakotoba because i used [this site](http://thelanguageofflowers.com/) and i think it's nothern american i'm sorry  
> 
> * i also wanted to use these flowers (spider flower: elope with me, white violet: let's take a chance on happiness) but i think these two would just sort of continue wandering about in a haze of "idk what we are but let's leave it like that for a while" until one of them ((cough akashi)) calls the other his boyfriend and mayuzumi's like wait. wait what. what
> 
> MY EXCUSE FOR THIS BEING POORLY WRITTEN IS THAT I WROTE IT IN AN ATTEMPT TO PROCRASTINATE I'M SORRY I HOPE IT'S NOT TOO TERRIBLE AND OOC. i've been stuck in akamayu hell lately how'd you do
> 
> i'm [shigukyos](http://shigukyos.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you wanna find me! pls leave a kudos if you liked this to boost my ego ; u ;


End file.
